Kelela's Debut Album Is a Hugely Bold Invitation

“Let me tell you something / I’m about to overflow,” sings Kelela, imposing both her will and her seductively open presence on the title track of her debut album,Take Me Apart. After introducing her sinuously soothing vocals on collaborations with the likes of Solange and Gorillaz, and making a name with breakout single “Bank Head,” the Ethiopian-American singer has now truly arrived, thanks to 14 brand new songs that emphatically announce just who she is.

Take Me Apart is a cross-section of a relationship's rise and fall, rich with the 34-year-old’s signature emotional frankness, as well as courage. Take, for example, lead single "LMK," which infuses that everyday request to "let me know" with an erotic insistence, delivered with a crucial lack of anxiety. (She told Genius, "I tried to make it so that every lyric is an empowering one for women to sing.") Or album opener "Frontline," which casts a critical eye on that shattered relationship: "Cry and talk about it, baby, but it ain't no use / I ain't gonna sit here with your blues." Her heart may have broken, but the woman is still very much intact.

Then there's the title track, which, Kelela tells me over the phone, has several meanings: “One of them being the emotional risk of demanding that someone make you vulnerable, essentially." Or there's "the very visceral battle-y meaning around it, the sexual reference being how you can still dominate when you demand that someone put you in your place." When I wonder whether the singer—whose full name is Kelela Mizanekristos—is putting herself and her emotions somehow at risk with this multilayered invitation, she suggests an amendment: "I would probably say that I am taking risks rather than at risk. Do you know what I mean? I think I’m taking risks and putting myself out there." The distinction is important; Kelela's daring comes from a place of self-awareness and power.

With Take Me Apart, Kelela exposes herself not only emotionally, but also physically: The album's lush cover features a photograph of the singer, naked and draped in her own tresses. The concept was a challenging one, she says: "I felt terrified when I said it out loud, but I also knew when I felt that way that it was the right decision. Because the whole point of the record is that it would be scary for me, that every layer of it is risk-taking." Yet the assurance that offsets the lyrics' vulnerability also permeates the cover imagery. Kelela and her creative director, Mischa Notcutt, decided to show this with her only raiment: an endless waterfall of hair. "As a black woman, there’s so much pride and communication through hair," she says. "It’s naturally something that you are excited to embellish on and be creative about."

Take Me Apart is out now.

Warp Records

Just like the mélange of emotions her songs grapple with, the style of Kelela's music is proudly complex. Combining the melodic grace of R&B, the grunt of dirty electronica, and the fearlessness of punk, the songs flit lightly around ideas of genre without any intention of landing. As befits a musician whose output is so uniquely wrought, Kelela says she doesn't think about genre before she writes her songs. After the music is birthed, though, the question of genre does become important. "I’ve talked about that with friends, about what genre makes sense to choose for each record and the strategy around that.... Sometimes it’s more about the moment of time, and other times it’s more about the sound of the song. Sometimes it’s about what’s going on in larger life, in politics."

Inescapably, then, race is a core consideration in that equation. "We are as artists we are racialized through genre, and called black—without being called black—through genre." Kelela's relationship with ideas of genre is complex; she is happy to say that she sings "within the tradition of R&B," but points out that many other black artists who don't are still put in the same category simply because of their race. And then, she says, "there are times when the same word can make me feel marginalized." In different contexts, she opts for different labels: "I try to make it not confusing, but to be true to the fact that I’m layered and intersectional. It’s hard to talk about in just one way."

You don't need all of this context to know that Take Me Apart is a bold statement as well as being a stunning first record; it's easy to predict that it'll end up on "best of the year" lists everywhere. But the intelligence and care behind it—along with Kelela's extraordinary talent—ramp up that impression. And such a statement can be made because the woman behind it is centered enough to be stripped down to her core, it seems, as she thoughtfully offers one more interpretation of that title: "It also displays a confidence, like how strong one has to feel in order to invite a person to deconstruct them.”

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